Hallo!
I experimented with OpenBSD 4.2 on i386 platform, made two fdisk
partitions on the same disk, into each of them OpenBSD disklabel,
installed grub from packages and can successfully dualboot.
But i cant figure out if there is a way to access fdisk partition's
disklabel partitions while booted up from the other fdisk partition's
OpenBSD instance? Ie it seems, that either way e.g. wd0a is a root
partition and there isnt a way to point to non-booted-up disklabel's
root partition.
It doesnt practically impact my use of OpenBSD (workaround could be
using two physical disks, for example) but its interesting to know if it
is so.
Imre
PS In /usr/local/share/doc/grub/README.OpenBSD is an hint actually on this
...
When booting, the kernel will use the disklabel from the first OpenBSD
partition found, therefor grub has to set the partition type of unused
partitions to another value as can be seen in
/usr/local/share/examples/grub/menu.lst.
Louis V. Lambrecht wrote:
>> ....
My way is to use grub.
Has to do with the way OpenBSD default label reads and allocates the
labels in it's default install.
(I never could edit a disklabel correctly).
What I do is to partition the disk to have a second OpenBSD disklabel.
Also, I have my sources and packages(/usr/ports) on yet another slice.
Grub allows me to mark the operating system.
So, a normal entry for OpenBSD would look like
title openbsd_working
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
Which I can change for
title openbsd_testing
parttype (hd0,1) 0xB6
parttype (hd0,2) 0xA6
root (hd0,2)
chainloader +1
Uff course, must change amd revert the working instance to:
title openbsd_working
parttype (hd0,1) 0xA6
parttype (hd0,2) 0xB6
root (hd0,2)
chainloader +1
Grub let me hide or unhide partitions (which can be usefull if you try
to install an OS
via Anaconda (RedHats and derivates) which read the 0xA6 to be "active"
ad bortk out.
Will try the hide/unhide method on next fresh install.
Found this method straightforward, foolproof, and not needing to write
any wrappers.
